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With Sidewalk Labs having walked away from their ambitious plans to transform Toronto's Quayside site into a high-tech, eco-friendly neighbourhood—a move attributed in part to the COVID-19 pandemic and “unprecedented economic uncertainty”—what could have become Canada's largest concentration of mass-timber buildings has joined the ranks of other famously unbuilt "what if?" projects. The project was leading the charge on mass timber innovation, and its unexpected cancellation has left what could be described as a power vacuum, opening the door for a new torchbearer to champion mass timber construction.
Mike Yorke, President of the Carpenters Union District Council Ontario, is taking the reins with a new program focusing on innovation in timber construction, called Mass Timber Today. Quayside was to include 1.78 million ft² of residential space, built entirely with modular cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam). The loss of this projected surge of work for carpenters is being treated as a mere hiccup by the union, with Yorke pointing to changing trends in sustainable construction as well as modified building codes that recognize CLT and glulam's structural strength and fire resistance that are already making mass timber construction even more accessible and desirable for builders.
The aesthetic properties of timber construction were on full display in the Quayside plan, and their potential loss has been felt by some as they served as a blueprint for what can be done with the material. The Carpenters Union's new initiative aims to fill the void left by Sidewalk Labs' departure, with the campaign seeking to bring increased media, political, and industry awareness of mass timber construction and its many benefits. These range from green benefits including the use of renewable, locally-sourced wood with carbon-trapping properties, as well as cost-cutting and time-saving perks associated with mass timber.
In an article written by Yorke, he expands on the potential architectural applications;
"From an aesthetic perspective, Sidewalk Labs was a test case for what’s possible using this innovative material. In the architectural renderings, burnished, almost glowing CLT beams are manipulated into every possible configuration, demonstrating mass timber’s range of applications, from skyscrapers, mixed-use developments, and higher-education construction. It glimpsed an alternative to the all-over concrete that characterizes our contemporary cities, showing communities at work and play against a backdrop of a greener, more open urban canopy of natural wood and transparent glass."
The ambitions of Quayside reached far beyond the use of sustainable, local building materials, and though the notion of an "all-digital" neighbourhood has been put to bed for now, the all-timber development template introduced by Sidewalk Labs stands alone as the most attainable of the many concepts proposed.
"Sidewalk Labs could have been an urban fountainhead of Canadian building culture and mass timber," says Yorke. "Already, it punched above its weight in terms of ambition and connectedness; despite what has been said on the internet, the project as a whole was listening to and observing the world around it—what it could change for the better and where it could adapt to needs."
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